Forced Displacement and the City: Lessons from Germany and the MENA Region
The event is organized in cooperation with the Technical University of Berlin within the framework of the COSIMENA Call for Funding 2025. The symposium seeks to bring together experiences from different countries in the MENA region and Germany, creating a space for knowledge exchange, collaborative dialogue, and innovative approaches. It will explore how cities can develop efficient urban strategies, encourage integration and resilience, and re-envision the role of design in complex processes such as refugee integration, spatial justice, and sustainable development.
This symposium builds on the academic engagement of the organizers, Dr. Ayham Dalal and Dr. Juliana Canedo (Technische Universität Berlin), and follows their recent successful Winter School “Building Resilient Cities: Collaborative Design with Refugee Women and Children in Berlin and Cairo”, funded by DAAD Ta’ziz projects, which included a design-build project at a Sudanese community school. Additionally, the symposium is connected to the elective “Emergency Architecture / Displacement Urbanism” offered to senior architecture students, with the support of TU Berlin.
The one-day symposium is structured around three thematic sessions:
- Refugee Neighborhoods and Planning
- Refugee Housing and Shelter
- Collaborative Design and Participatory Planning in Contexts of Forced Migration
Contributions will come from experts in Germany, Egypt, and Jordan, and the event will conclude with a screening of the short film “Hope” by Ashraf Osam and Ayham Dalal.
Key information about the event
Date: October 1st 2025
Time: From 09:00 a.m. to 06:00 p.m. (Cairo Local Time)
Location: On-site Event; Regional Office Cairo (11 El-Saleh Ayoub Street, Zamalek, Cairo)
The event aims to shed light on the following perspectives
- How do municipalities and urban planning actors deal with forced migration and the city?
- How do refugees find emergency shelter and influence the housing market?
- Taking into consideration Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): how can the influx of refugees and migrants influence local and international development agenda, and what impact does that have on planning tools?
- Eventually, many services and infrastructures like sheltering, housing, education, and jobs are all developed informally, or with hybrid arrangements with UN actors. In such a context characterised by increasing competition between refugees and hosting communities, and the weakness of humanitarian support, what can urban planners and designers do?
Target Group
Architects, urban planners, urban designers, policy-makers, students, NGos, researchers from the fields of migrant and refugee studies.
Registration
To participate in the event, please register here: https://www.daad.de/surveys/497521?lang=en
Deadline for registration: September 20th, 2025
After your registration, the selected participants will receive a confirmation email with all the necessary information 0 days before the event.
